


lights and sirens

by freefallvertigo



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, Fluff, Pining, confessions of feelings, it's just so sof, they're in love ur honour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:20:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27546718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freefallvertigo/pseuds/freefallvertigo
Summary: Yaz takes the Doctor on a night time ride-along in her squad car.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 24
Kudos: 140





	lights and sirens

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was inspired by this amazing piece of art that i simply cannot get out of my head https://cupcakeshakesnake.tumblr.com/post/178901276798/let-the-doctor-have-her-sirens-dammit
> 
> also this is an unedited first draft so be warned lmao enjoy! hope ur all staying safe x

The fast food diet is an unavoidable consequence of pulling graveyard shifts. 

While Yaz is cruising the city in her patrol car beneath a curious moon that follows her around every bend, the only store fronts that aren’t shuttered and dark are those of late night takeaways and convenience shops. Their pale, yellow light, smudged in the condensation of her wing mirror, isn’t particularly a beacon Yaz wants to follow. But her empty stomach groans and the hours left on the clock only threaten to aggravate her hunger. 

That’s why she finds herself walking out of a McDonald’s at two in the morning with a greasy paper bag in one hand and a piping hot coffee in the other. She’s about to head across the road to her car — past which a singing gaggle of drunk girls are either stumbling their way to another club or, Yaz hopes, a taxi rank — when a wheezing cough to her left makes her turn. 

Huddled in dirty blankets atop the sheltered steps of a closed bank is a homeless man Yaz has encountered several times before. His dreadlocks are tied into a ponytail and a grey, scruffy beard clings to his chin. Dark skin, scabbed and rough, sags from his bones and his frail body drowns in clothes that don’t fit. All his belongings are gathered around him: a sleeping bag, backpack, the saxophone he performs with on the high street in order to earn some petty cash. Yaz has left a handful of notes in there on multiple occasions. 

“Isaac?” Yaz comes to a stop at the bottom of the steps and peers at him through the shadows.

“Ah, Officer Khan!” Isaac grins with all the teeth he has left. He has a thick Nigerian accent and always seems to be smiling. “I was just thinking that the night could not get more beautiful. I guess God had something to say about that, eh?”

Yaz smiles; she’s used to his harmless flirting. “All the shelters full tonight?”

“I will try again tomorrow. I don’t mind. I am under the stars and the girls are singing! Maybe I’ll play them a song. What do you think?”

Yaz looks over her shoulder. Across the street, the drunk girls’ progress has stopped and they’re presently trying and failing to give one another piggy backs. She has a feeling it’ll end in disaster. “Not sure that’s your crowd, mate.” When she turns back around, she notices Isaac eyeing the paper bag in her hand. She glances down at it. “Tell you what, how about you play me a song and I’ll give you this food?”

Isaac waves his hand with a scoff. “I do not take payment from pretty women.”

Yaz shrugs. “Suit yourself. It’s just that I ordered the wrong thing, so it’s only gonna end up in the bin.” She ignores the way her stomach protests. “You like chicken burgers, don’t you?” When she reaches into the bag and pulls out a loaded burger wrapped in thin white paper, the greasy smell of it practically curdles in the air. 

Isaac chews a chapped lip. “You drive a hard bargain, officer.” 

“Got fries, too.”

“Sauce?”

“Curry. Extra.”

“A woman after my own heart,” jokes Isaac, clutching his chest for emphasis. He reaches for his case and unzips his saxophone. “Any requests?”

Yaz takes a seat on the steps below him and leans against the pillar. “Surprise me.”

Though she admittedly knows little about brass instruments or music, Isaac has always struck Yaz as a natural talent. When he plays for large crowds, he usually plays upbeat, spirited tunes that get them smiling and moving. Tonight, for Yaz, he plays something smoky and slow. His music carries far and wide — breezing through the quiet streets with an increasingly haunting melody. A clement wind picks up, as though eager to disperse his tune throughout the city and deliver it to the ears of the drunks and the vagabonds and the criminals and the wild. Each as in need as the last. 

The song has no words, of course, but if Yaz had to guess, she’d say it was a love song. That’s how he plays it, at any rate: with his eyes closed and a tender ode written across his face. And every naked note makes Yaz think of the Doctor, so it has to be a love song, doesn’t it?

“That were beautiful,” Yaz says when it’s over. She gets to her feet and hands Isaac, who has adopted an uncharacteristically forlorn countenance, the bag of food and her coffee. “Does it have a name?”

“Silence.”

“Silence? Why?”

“Sit with it a while,” advises Isaac. “You’ll understand eventually.”

After bidding Isaac goodnight and discreetly dropping some cash into his saxophone case, Yaz descends the steps and starts towards her car. She comes to an abrupt halt when, tucked into the alleyway she’d parked in front of, she spots the TARDIS. The Doctor is leaning against the wood with her hands in her pockets, watching Yaz with a faint smile tugging at her lips. 

“Doctor?” Yaz jogs across the street with a frown. “What you doin’ here?”

“Hiya, Yaz.” The Doctor peels away from the door. “Sorry, didn’t mean to bother you. I just — well, s’pose I were just in the neighbourhood. Asked old girl to take me to you. Figured you’d be at your flat.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Course! Everything’s magnificent. I were just gonna set down and do some repairs ‘til mornin’.” The Doctor scuffs the sidewalk with the toes of her boots and gazes past Yaz’s shoulder at Isaac. 

“You been there this whole time?”

“Didn’t even hear me arrive, y’were so engrossed in the music,” chuckles the Doctor. “Chose a good name for his song, don’t you think?”

“Haven’t figured out what it means yet.”

“No,” says the Doctor, ruminative. “I don’t s’pose you have.”

Yaz knits her brows together. The Doctor looks a little more subdued than usual, and she has a feeling that repairs aren’t really why she came. “Somethin’ on your mind?”

“Always. Lots goin’ on up here, Khan. Constantly.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for example, I were just musin’ on how peculiar it is that the collective heartbeats of seven billion people don’t make their own kinda symphony. Don’t you think we should be able to hear ‘em? That’s a lot of hearts. But it wouldn’t be very practical, I s’pose, would it? Walkin’ around every day to the drum beat of billions of other people’s organs? Personally, I’m an insomniac at the best of times.”

That isn’t the answer Yaz was expecting, but she decides to indulge the Doctor nonetheless. “But what if they do make a sound? Maybe we’re all just so used to it that it doesn’t register to us unless we press our ears to it.”

“Nah. You’d notice it, wouldn’t you? When you stepped into the TARDIS and left, you’d notice that the song were over.”

“I do notice it,” claims Yaz with a frown. “The TARDIS is so quiet when nobody else is awake and when you’re not doin’ your bloody repairs. It’s like a crypt. Surely you’ve picked up on that.”

The Doctor drops her eyes. 

Yaz wants to kick herself. Of course the Doctor has picked up on it; it’s probably the very reason she came. She can’t imagine spending so long alone on a ship so vast and so empty and not craving the company of another. 

“Well, I oughta leave you to it, eh? You’ve a city to serve and protect, after all. And those star-fuel tanks aren’t gonna mend ‘emselves.” The Doctor takes a slow step back towards the TARDIS, but she has a hopelessly sulking look on her face that Yaz has never been able to refuse or dismiss. 

“Hang on,” Yaz says. She checks her watch and purses her lips. Her shift won’t be over for a couple of hours, but it’s been a relatively quiet night so far. “Look, if you’re not too busy, maybe you could ride—“

“A ride along with PC Khan?” blurts the Doctor, suddenly beaming ear to ear. “Oh, ace! Can I have a uniform?”

“No.” Yaz follows an excitable Doctor to her car and unlocks it. 

“Ooh, can you arrest me?” The Doctor asks her as they climb in. “Not been arrested in a while. You’ll have to do better than those handcuffs though. I’ll only Houdini my way out of ‘em.”

“I’m not arresting you, Doctor,” sighs Yaz, turning the key in the ignition and starting the car. “Seatbelt.”

“But—“

“Seatbelt, or we’re not movin’ from this kerb.”

Pouting, the Doctor reluctantly obliges and pulls her seatbelt across her body. Once Yaz hears it fasten, she pulls away from the sidewalk and drives away from the high street. 

“Can we—“

“Nope.”

“But you don’t even know what I were gonna say!”

“We’re not puttin’ the lights and sirens on.”

“Yaz…” whines the Doctor. 

Yaz makes the unforgivable mistake of glancing at her. The Doctor’s bottom lip is jutting out and her golden-brown eyes are wide and pleading and so very sad. Yaz sinks into them like she always does; like they’re quicksand and Yaz is up to her neck in them with no chance of escape. This time, she doesn’t even struggle. Let them take her. 

“Fine,” she yields.

The Doctor’s whole face lights up and it stirs something in Yaz’s chest. Something divine and painful. She wants to gift wrap it and hand it to the Doctor with a bow on top and tell her she’s been waiting forever to give her that present, but she isn’t so sure the Doctor would even want it. 

“Oh, brilliant!”

“Just let me take us to a quieter—“

Too late. The Doctor darts for the console and flicks the button. Just like that, the flashing lights on top of the car come to life and a piercing siren wails to life, slicing clean through the fragile serenity of sleeping Sheffield. Yaz bites back a laugh. 

Bouncing in her seat, the Doctor rolls the window down and sticks her head out to get a proper look. Yaz watches her out of the corner of her eye. As they drive, the wind combs through her unkempt hair and the red and blue lights soak into her fair skin, her perfect teeth; her every mole, and freckle, and the creases around her overjoyed eyes. Red and blue, Yaz decides, are excellent colours on the Doctor. They paint her in thrill. 

“Having fun?” Yaz shouts. 

The Doctor sticks up her thumb. Her amazed laughter is stolen by the whipping wind and the sirens screaming over her, but Yaz can still make out the way her body shakes with it. Behind her, passing streetlamps and occasional lit windows create a blurry tapestry of light and colour, in front of which the Doctor is radiant. Free. Unforgettable. 

“Can we go faster?” yells the Doctor. 

Yaz presses down a fraction harder on the pedal. The Doctor whoops in response, extending one of her arms and letting the current of air weave through the gaps in her fingers. Yaz feels stupid to envy the icy wind, only she covets the way it cards through her soft hair, envelops her body; kisses her cheeks and her cool pink lips. 

“You should try this, Yaz! It’s wicked!” 

“How about I keep us from crashin’ instead?” calls Yaz. 

“Oh! Yeah, you do that!”

Yaz laughs. “You’re so cute,” she mumbles, forgetting to filter herself before the words have already spilled from the tip of her reckless tongue. Her eyes go wide and she chances a look at the Doctor. If she heard, she doesn’t let on; just continues to hang out of the window and gaze at the night sky. 

They carry on like that for a while, driving aimlessly across the city and sticking to non-residential areas. Eventually, the Doctor pulls her head back inside and turns to Yaz with bright pink cheeks and hair sticking out in all directions.

“Know what I proper fancy?” she asks. Her voice is a little hoarse.

“A hairbrush?”

“A slushie!”

“Are you mad? Mate, it’s freezing.”

“Is it?” The Doctor shrugs. “Hadn’t noticed.”

Sure enough, when the Doctor smiles at Yaz the way she’s smiling at her right now, it’s easy for Yaz to forget the frost as well.

A short time later, they pull into the car park outside an express supermarket. Yaz hasn’t even killed the engine before the Doctor is scrambling out and making a beeline for the entrance. Amused, Yaz shakes her head and follows her inside. 

Lit up by garish fluorescents, the supermarket is vacant but for the two of them and a member of staff flicking through a magazine at the counter. From speakers in each corner of the room plays a mellow pop song, which the Doctor skips to along the confectionary aisle. Yaz stops, for a second, and watches her. Her boots squeak across the floor and her coat flairs behind her when she spins in a circle and struggles to decide on the biscuits she wants. It’s during mundane moments like these, most of all, when the Doctor takes her breath away. 

It’s when the dimple between her brows is accentuated by concentration, and her hands are on her hips, and her lip is pulled between her teeth, and her foot is tapping absently along to a song she doesn’t know — out of rhythm, but she’s never cared about things like that.

Yaz clenches her jaw and leaves the Doctor to it. She’s at the till paying for their slushies — red and blue, of course — when the Doctor comes up from behind and dumps a tonne of biscuits and a handful of Kinder eggs onto the counter. Yaz gives her a look.

“Kinder eggs, Yaz! They’ve got toys in ‘em!” enthuses the Doctor. 

“Will you be paying together?” asks the clerk.

“Oh. Sorry, still don’t have any cash on me,” winces the Doctor. “You don’t mind, do you? I’ll let you keep half the toys!”

Yaz rolls her eyes affectionately. “I’ll pay for it.”

“Aw, thanks Yaz. You’re the best.” When the Doctor gives Yaz a tight, sideways hug by way of proving her gratitude, Yaz’s shock almost knocks her off her feet. That, and the force of the Doctor throwing herself at her. She doesn’t even think to reciprocate the embrace until after the Doctor peels away, picks up her slushie, and glides back towards the door with a roguish wink and a straw in her mouth. Yaz is left with the Doctor’s signature scent of earth and smoke and vanilla sinking into her bloodstream — and the bill. 

There isn’t long left of Yaz’s shift, so she drives them up to the top of a grassy hill nearby. They sit on a park bench overlooking one side of the city, slurping on their slushies and snacking on the Doctor’s diabetic haul. 

“Thanks for this, Yaz,” the Doctor says through a mouthful of custard cream crumbs. “It’s nice havin’ a bit of company sometimes.”

“It’s not a problem, Doctor. Seriously,” insists Yaz. “Just call me if you ever wanna hang out. We don’t even have to go on any big adventures or anythin’. We can just get slushies and eat biscuits, if that’s what you wanna do. Maybe not while I’m workin’ next time though.”

The Doctor smiles bashfully. “I’d like that.”

“Me too.”

Yaz’s breathing stops when the Doctor rests her head on her shoulder. She goes very, very still — afraid to move in case she scares the Doctor away. Neither of them talk for a while. They just sit on the bench and watch the dark sky begin to dilute with the first hues of approaching dawn. Yaz thinks she can hear the chorus of seven billion hearts. In reality, it’s just her own. The rest of the world falls quiet. No sirens. No howling wind. No traffic or supermarket speakers or shouting to be heard. 

Only silence. 

In the silence, the Doctor begins to hum. 

It takes a few seconds before Yaz can place the tune, but she does. It’s the song Isaac played for her earlier that night. 

_ Sit with it a while. You’ll understand eventually. _

Her moment of epiphany is a soft thing. It comes to her like a warm hug; like a reassurance murmured into her ear. Why would anybody call a song so mesmerising, and so laden with such loud yearning, ‘silence’? It’s quite simple really. 

He named it silence because his is the soul-stirring song that plays in moments of quietude with those whom you cherish; because silence isn’t really silence when you’re existing comfortably beside a person you love. No, the world around the two of you will always be rich with music and the thousand things said with every raw note and steady beat, beat, beat. 

“It’s a really good song,” Yaz remarks. 

“It is, isn’t it?” The Doctor lifts her head from Yaz’s shoulder and her heart plummets. “What colour’s my tongue?” she asks, sticking her tongue out and comically crossing her eyes to try and get a look.

“Bright blue,” snorts Yaz. “Told you, those slushies are radioactive.”

“Taste great though, don’t they?” The Doctor shoves another full biscuit into her mouth and washes it down with a healthy chug of her slushie. 

“You’re grim.”

“Am I? Thought y’said I were cute?” teases the Doctor. There’s a devilish twinkle in her bright eyes. 

Yaz stops dead. “I — what?” 

“In the car. Remember? I told you you should try stickin’ your head out the window and then you told me you’d rather not crash the car and then I agreed with you and then you laughed and called me cute,” the Doctor recalls matter-of-factly. “It really weren’t that long ago.”

“Oh. Um. You heard that?” 

“Yep. I’ve got excellent hearin’, me. Time Lord thing, I guess.”

“Right.” Yaz looks down, fiddling with the straw of her slushie. “Sorry. I didn’t even mean to. It just kinda came out.”

“What you sorry for? You’re not wrong,” gloats the Doctor, nudging Yaz’s shoulder with her own. “I  _ am _ pretty cute. In fact, I’d probably have gone with adorable. But there’s still time to amend that, if you so choose.”

Confused, Yaz affords the Doctor a sidelong look. “You’re… did I not weird you out?”

“Oh, Yasmin Khan,” sighs the Doctor. She puts her slushie down on the floor and takes one of Yaz’s numb hands into one of her equally freezing ones. “Why is it y’really think I came lookin’ for you in the middle of the night?”

Yaz can’t stop staring at their hands. “Dunno. You were lonely?”

“No. Well, I mean, yeah. But no.” She grazes the tip of a finger along the side of Yaz’s face and Yaz still thinks if she makes any sudden movements all of this is going to blow away. “I came to find you, Yaz, ‘cause I think you’re pretty adorable too, and there’s no one else I’d rather spend my time with.”

“Oh,” breathes Yaz. She doesn’t know what else to say. 

Misinterpreting Yaz’s sudden muteness, the Doctor draws her hand away and furrows her brow. “Is that not okay?”

“No. Yes. I mean — it’s okay,” stammers Yaz. “It’s really, really okay. I just weren’t expecting it.”

“You weren’t?”

Yaz shakes her head. 

“Why not?”

“I guess… when you spend so long wanting somethin’, it becomes harder and harder to believe you’ll ever have it. And I’ve wanted — Doctor, I’ve wanted you for a  _ long _ time.”

The Doctor studies the vulnerability on Yaz’s face with a subtle melancholy weighing on her features. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” says Yaz. “It isn’t your fault I fell for you, is it?”

The Doctor lifts her eyebrows and Yaz curses herself for her second slip of the tongue that night. She pushes herself off the bench.

“Um. Sorry. We should go back to—“ Yaz is cut off by a hand closing around her wrist. The Doctor has followed her off the bench. When Yaz turns to her, she finds conflicting emotions battling for predominance behind her animated eyes. She can’t pinpoint a single one. 

“Yaz,” the Doctor whispers after a moment of silent regard. She takes a step closer, which was all the distance that separated them in the first place. 

“Look, I’m sorry. I—“

“Stop apologising. You’ve absolutely nothin’ to be sorry for,” asserts the Doctor. Her hands find Yaz’s waist beneath her high-vis jacket and Yaz looks down at them, and then back up, and then back down. The Doctor is staring at her like she’s aching to do something Yaz has only ever dreamed of doing. Now that she thinks about it, she remembers seeing that very same look on her face so many times before. 

But it’s so much louder now.

In the silence. 

Slowly, the Doctor lifts a hand to Yaz’s cheek and dusts her thumb across her shivering lower lip. Yaz gasps quietly against it. The Doctor leans in, and they’re both watching one another so closely.

“Is it okay if I kiss you, Yaz?” the Doctor asks. Their lips are just shy of touching.

Yaz swallows. “Please.”

A fleeting smile graces the Doctor’s eyes. She nestles her nose against Yaz’s, and Yaz feels her breath against her skin, and they both are so shy about it. Their first kiss, in fact, is little more than a nervous touch of lips. They pause. Search each other. Share a quiet laugh at their own timidity. 

And then they try again. 

The second time around, eyelids flutter closed and cold mouths press firmer together. The Doctor fists her hands in Yaz’s clothes, Yaz cups the Doctor’s face, and their lips part to welcome one another home. 

Like that, they melt into each other. Like that, the silence reaches a deafening crescendo. 

Their kiss is explorative. It’s as patient as it is keen, and as kind as it is desperate. They both taste like sugar and artificial blueberry, but Yaz hardly notices through her euphoria. Because the Doctor is kissing her. She’s kissing her like they’re the protagonists of their own love story, and like maybe she’s been waiting for this just as long as Yaz has. And that’s incredible.

It’s the most incredible thing that Yaz can think of.

Except the way the Doctor’s mouth feels on hers. 

It could be ten seconds or it could be an age before they draw back for breath. When they do, they both break out into giddy smiles and bump their foreheads together. The kiss might have ended but they aren’t yet ready to let one another go. 

“You’re a magnificent kisser, Yasmin Khan,” grins the Doctor, toying with Yaz’s coat zipper like she’s still nervous. “Knew you would be.”

Yaz locks her hands together behind the Doctor’s neck. “Thought about it a lot, have you?” 

“Once or twice.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm.”

“Wait. Do you have a  _ crush _ on me, Doctor?” 

“Oh, be quiet, Yaz,” says the Doctor, though neither of them have stopped grinning. 

Yaz feels light-headed; dizzy. She wouldn’t be all too surprised if she were to look down and find that the two of them were floating way above the city. That’s how high up she feels right now. How untouchable. 

Her watch begins to beep and Yaz presses a button to silence it. “Shift’s over.”

“And might I say you’ve been mighty productive, PC Khan.”

“Well, Sheffield didn’t burn down, did it? And I caught myself an alien. Reckon I didn’t do too bad, all things considered.”

The Doctor bites her lip and Yaz is already thinking about kissing her again. “What’ll you do with your alien, now you’ve caught it? I mean, you don’t wanna let it get away again. Never know what havoc it might wreak. There’s a biscuit factory somewhere just lookin’ to get raided.”

“I bet,” laughs Yaz. “Actually, I thought, if she weren’t too busy fixin’ star-fuel tanks, maybe she’d want to come for somethin’ to eat at mine. And maybe she’d want to stay a while after.”

The Doctor perks up on a subatomic level. “Tea at Yaz’s?”

“Sun’s about to come up, so I guess technically it’s breakfast.”

“Ooh, breakfast at Yaz’s!” The Doctor startles Yaz with another fast, excited kiss. “Even better! I just have one teensy request.”

“Anythin’,” vows Yaz.

“Can we turn on the lights and sirens on the way back?”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr: freefallthirteen


End file.
